At Siggraph 2025 in Vancouver, SideFX launched Houdini 21, the latest iteration of the industry-standard tool for procedural 3D animation and VFX. Houdini continues to dominate the media and entertainment landscape; according to the State of 3D 2024 and 2025 surveys by Poliigon.com, it holds top spots for stability, performance, and developer confidence across animation, advertising, games, and VFX. It is truly a remarkable application.
However, with new software capabilities come a shift in hardware necessities. With the launch of Houdini 21, SideFX has updated its system requirements to reflect the computational demands of modern procedural animation and fluid simulations. SideFX’s official system requirements often list the absolute floor for functionality—computers that can open the software but can barely perform any meaningful work.
This report analyzes the gap between minimum and recommended or appropriate requirements, to identify what is actually required for a professional workflow, moving beyond obsolete specifications to ensure artists are not bottlenecked by their tools.
Our analysis breaks down the shift away from legacy hardware, emphasizing the necessity for modern processors, the critical importance of the GPU and its VRAM capacity, and the move toward modern operating systems. We provide a detailed look at what we consider appropriate specifications versus official documentation to help IT managers and artists align their workstation investments with productivity goals.
